An Emerson College poll found that 49 percent of U.S. voters believe that the Trump administration is “truthful,” while only 39 percent feel that way about the news media. Worse, for the so-called “opposition party,” 53 percent of those surveyed described the media as “untruthful.”

The poll, released on Tuesday, also showed that Americans are divided on Trump’s performance so far — 48 percent of registered voters approve of the job that Trump is doing, compared to 47 percent who disapprove.

It a statistic that should not come as a surprise, the poll notes that 89 percent of Republicans approve of Trump, while 81 percent of Democrats disapprove. According to the poll, Trump’s “failure to pass the 50 percent threshold” for approval is because of his standing among independents, a group in which 52 percent disapprove.

Trump and his surrogates have been combative with the media, often referring to CNN as “fake news,” and bashing the industry in general, labeling it the “opposition party.”

The partisan divide is clear throughout the poll’s findings, with 89 percent of Republicans calling the Trump administration truthful, while 77 percent of Democrats find the administration untruthful.

Conversely, 69 percent of Democrats find the news media truthful, while 91 percent of Republicans consider them untruthful. Independents split the difference — 42 percent call the Trump administration untruthful and 45 percent say and the news media is.

The nationwide Emerson College poll, conducted February 5-6, also found that only 39 percent have a favorable view of Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Source: Americans Trust Trump Administration More Than News Media in New Poll

“These things are cultural debris,” a friend of Russell Kirk’s once said to him in regard to unwanted, rare classical books. “It’s as if a great ship had sunk, but a few trifles of flotsam had bobbed up from the hulk and were drifting on the surface of the ocean. Who wants this sea-drift? Not the sharks. You and I are going about in a small boat collecting bits of debris.”

Rebecca Rego Barry, the author of Rare Books Uncovered, is one of these seafarers—or, a “scout,” as they are called in the rare book trade. Her colorful collection of stories profiles an array of bibliophiles, some professional, others amateur, and many accidental. While detailing dozens of serendipitous discoveries, Barry teaches readers the two ingredients necessary for scouting: what she calls wisdom, or technical knowledge; and luck.

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Can churches engage transhumanism, which may very well be the next big science vs. religion battle, positively or should they absolutely resist this movement, an academic institution in Alabama asked during a multi-day event focused on whether Christianity and Transhumanism could co-exist.

Samford University’s Center for Science and Religion held the event, titled “Transhumanism and the Church,” which took place from Sept. 24-26 and featured 27 presentations with approximately 120 attendees for the opening lecture alone.

Transhumanism is the theory that science and technology can be used to advance the evolution of human beings beyond current physical and mental limitations.

A spokesperson for Samford directed The Christian Post to statements made by Professor Steve Donaldson, program director in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and a senior fellow in Samford’s Center for Science and Religion.

“[Transhumanism’s] potential ramifications for the church are substantial. Can a climate be created in which churches and people of religious faith engage a transhumanist future positively or must the church resist? Is resistance futile?” stated Donaldson.

“Recognizing that differences of opinion on the merits of technological enhancement do not necessarily depend upon religious orientation, can the church actually lead the way toward common and beneficial perspectives?”

Donaldson also stated that he and the Center believed that “this is quite possibly the next big science and religion issue to face the church.”

” … this conference was meant to constitute an early step in developing a coherent and forward-looking Christian approach to the relationship between transhumanist endeavors and the church,” continued Donaldson.

Keynote speakers for the event included Donaldson; the Rev. Dr. Ron Cole-Turner of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; Christina Bieber Lake, Ph.D. of Wheaton College; and Arizona State University Professor Joel Garreau.

Lectures on the conference schedule included “Why Transhumanists Cannot Tell a Story to Save Their Lives,” “Do Bigger Brains Mean Smaller Gods? Cognitive Science and Theological Perspectives on Transhumanism and the Church,” and “Nietzsche’s Power Ontology and Transhumanism: Or, Why Christians cannot be Transhumanists and remain Christian.”

The “Transhumanism and the Church” conference was funded by The John Templeton Foundation and The Issachar Fund. According to its website, the Templeton Foundation seeks to be “a philanthropic catalyst for discoveries relating to the Big Questions of human purpose and ultimate reality.”

“We support research on subjects ranging from complexity, evolution, and infinity to creativity, forgiveness, love, and free will,” continued the Foundation’s site. “We encourage civil, informed dialogue among scientists, philosophers, and theologians and between such experts and the public at large, for the purposes of definitional clarity and new insights.”

The Rev. Dr. Christopher J. Benek, a Florida pastor who gave one of the presentations during a concurrent session at the conference, told CP that he believed the conference was “particularly important because church leaders and laity need to become educated on these issues immediately.”

“Such an education will enable Christians to distinguish between tyrannical transhumanism that advances Nietzschean principles verses Christian Transhumanism that seeks to discover what it may mean to become more human across the scope of what it means to be creatures made in the image of God,” said Rev. Benek.

“The conference did an excellent job of addressing all sides of these issues in order to give the participants the information that they needed to discern how God might be calling them to engage advancing technologies in the future.”

Benek also told CP that he believed conferences like Samford’s “will become more and more prevalent throughout college campuses in the future.”

“The impact of such advancements on young adults will be that young Christians who feel called to pursuits in science won’t have to feel like they have to sacrifice their faith in order to pursue their vocational goals,” continued Benek.

“It is important that young people have opportunities to think critically as to how advancing technologies will shape humanity’s future.”

Samford intends to post the conference lectures online free of charge at the Center’s webpage within the next few weeks.

Source: The Next Big Science vs. Church Battle: Can Transhumanism and Christianity Co-Exist?

On Sept.25, I attended the interfaith service hosted by Pope Francis at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. It was an intimate gathering of about 200 faith leaders from various religious traditions.

I was invited because of my involvement in the interfaith space, and it was a joy to be among friends who share similar views on the power of faith to make positive change.

I had the honor of sitting front and center because my wife, Dr. Gunisha Kaur, and her father had a special role at the service. The two of them were selected as the two Sikh representatives, and therefore they both sat onstage alongside the 10 other faith leaders — including Pope Francis.

After the service, Pope Francis met the faith leaders onstage. When he approached my father-in-law, the pope reached out to embrace him. Later he approached my wife, and upon learning she is pregnant, Pope Francis touched her belly to offer his blessing.

Moments like these remain for a lifetime. Although we are not Catholic, my wife and I deeply admire Pope Francis for his social message and his humble actions. He preaches a model of religion that brings together the political and the spiritual — and he practices what he preaches.

We identify with his message because, as Sikhs, we also believe that the true power of religion is its ability to transform one’s spirit and to transform the world into a more just place.

After religious leaders offered prayers of peace, hope and renewal, Pope Francis spoke about our shared experiences and our collective identity as people of faith. He emphasized that the best of religion comes when we use it as a force to bring people together and that religion is at its worst when we use it to exclude and divide.

He spoke about how love and faith can serve to overcome trauma and heal pain, a message that was especially poignant given that we were all gathered at ground zero, the very site where terrorism and murder was committed in the name of religion.

What’s refreshing about Pope Francis is that his faith compels him to serve those around him and to address the greatest challenges facing our world. He takes on issues such as climate change and immigration in a way that even our politicians have not. He gives his heart to addressing poverty and the socially disenfranchised — to the point where he cancels his lunch with world leaders to dine with the homeless.

Pope Francis is the people’s pope, and he has quickly becomes a paragon for all people of faith. He is modeling for the world what religion can be at its best: a force that can bring more good to our world than anything else. I feel privileged to have been a witness to his service, and I will always cherish my memory of what it felt like to be in his presence.

More than anything, though, I will continue to use Pope Francis as a role model for how I would like to live my life as a person of faith — with a quiet humility, commitment to justice, and a youthful spirit that draws energy from serving those who need it most.

Source: Pope Francis showed the world what religion can be at its best – San Antonio Express-News

I am a proud American who believes that America has held – and still holds – a very sensitive and special place in the affairs of mankind on Planet Earth. I believe that America has been divinely blessed and protected in our two centuries plus of existence.

I believe that America has been a counter balance that has cancelled out a lot of tyranny, evil and conquest and, admittedly, we have made a lot of mistakes, but on balance we have exerted a certain Pax Americana in the international affairs of mankind.

It took a lot of old fashioned guts for the Continental Congress to stand up to the world’s mightiest military and tell them that we demanded our independence, even at the peril of going up against a far superior force on land and sea with a ragtag army of untrained citizens, many who had to supply their own firearms.

It took courage above and beyond for Abraham Lincoln to push the country into a Civil War that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt would divide this nation for decades.

It took guts to give the order for American troops to storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, straight into the face of artillery and machine gunfire, wave after wave being cut to ribbons by German shore emplacements.

The history of this nation is written in the blood and courage of men who stood in the face of overwhelming odds, politicians, soldiers, statesmen and ordinary citizens who sought to do the right thing regardless of the cost or the consequences.

Well, ladies and gentlemen of the United States Congress, it seems that that particular pen has run out of ink. The courageous politicians that once championed this nation have been replaced, for the most part, by a breed of milksop, politically correct, scared of their own shadow, pushover, pathetic excuses for public servants who are supposed to be representing a constituency of citizens who have to live with the circumstances of their timid folly.

You don’t even have the courage to face down an out of control president, even when he makes a deal with the devil. Don’t you bunch of timid capons even care what kind of world you’re leaving to your children and grandchildren, not to even mention the rest of us? Are you really party partisans before you’re parents and grandparents or even human beings?

Be honest with yourselves a minute, go into the bathroom and look in the mirror and ask the person you see this question.

“Do I really believe that Iran will not use the money we’re releasing to them to finance terrorists to kill Americans, and, when, not if, but when, the Iranians develop their nuclear device, will they really use it against America and Israel?”

You can’t hide from the truthful answer to that question forever, an answer will be required of you one day.

You have allowed Obama to tilt the Supreme Court so far to the left that they’re little more than a shameful extension of the Executive Branch.

You have talked for decades about the porous southern border but have done absolutely nothing about it.

You have allowed cities in this nation to declare themselves sanctuary cities where they protect the worst of the worst criminal aliens, American citizens paying an awful price for your silence.

You watch an impossible National Debt balloon completely out of control knowing full well that a day of reckoning is coming that will seriously curtail the quality of life for coming generations.

You allow corrupt government agencies like the IRS to run over the very people you are sworn to protect and allow the entitlement society to expand exponentially while you actually entertain the idea of raising taxes on those who still work and shoulder the burden.

You compose a third of the constitutionally mandated ruling system and you shirk your duty
and allow this nation to move a little closer to the edge every day.

I wish you bunch of sold-out, jaded, burned-out hacks would just go home and let some people who still have some vision and whose consciences haven’t been seared past the point of reminding them when they’re wrong take over and start to claw this nation back on to the path of sanity,

Your ratings are in the single digits, your morals are in the gutter, your minds are on self-preservation and somewhere along the way you traded your honor for political expediency.

You’ve violated your oaths, you’ve betrayed your country you’ve feathered your nests and you’ve sat on your hands while an imperial president has rubbed your noses in the dirt time after time.

You’re no longer men, you’re puppets, you’re caricatures, jokes, a gaggle of fading prostitutes for sale to anybody who can do you a political favor.

“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Source: Charlie Daniels Pens Open Letter to ‘Burned-Out Political Hacks’ in Congress

Portable keyboards for mobile devices tend to come in either rigid and foldable or rubbery and rollup forms. LG Electronics is launching one that’s a bit of both.

The Rolly rolls up into a long rectangular stick that can travel in your bag or pocket. Made of polycarbonate and ABS plastic, it combines the solidity of folding keyboards with the compactness of silicone ones that roll up.

The Rolly rolls up along four key rows. LG said it’s the first solid, rollable, wireless keyboard of its kind.

While it lacks a dedicated row for number keys, LG calls the Rolly a “full size” keyboard, saying that at 17 millimeters, the key pitch is almost as large as that of most desktop keyboards. Key pitch is the distance between the center of keys.

Two fold-out arms in the Rolly can support smartphones as well as tablets with screens of up to 10 inches. It can pair with two devices at the same time via Bluetooth 3.0, and users can toggle between each by pressing a key.

The device will pair automatically when it’s unrolled. A single AAA battery can power it for about three months on an average.

The Rolly will be exhibited at IFA 2015, which kicks off next week in Berlin, and will be launched in the U.S. in September, followed by markets in Europe, Latin America and Asia in the fourth quarter. LG has not announced a price yet.

Mobile keyboards such as Microsoft’s Universal Foldable Mobile Keyboard have been touted as a solution for users who don’t enjoy typing on the touchscreens of smartphones and tablets. But they’re gaining more attention amid efforts such as Microsoft Continuum and Apple Continuity, which aim for a seamless integration of various mobile devices and accessories. 

Source: LG rolls out rollable keyboard without the rubbery feel | PCWorld